


a life in your shape

by mossymoon



Series: be the scout [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Crushes, Declarations Of Love, Denial of Feelings, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Head Injury, Hurt No Comfort, Inspired by a Mitski Song, Love Confessions, M/M, Near Death, Near Death Experiences, Secret Crush, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan Anime Spoilers, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan Spoilers, Short One Shot, Spoilers, Title from a Mitski Song, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, more specifically S2 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28911762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mossymoon/pseuds/mossymoon
Summary: you've always wanted it, always pictured it, always ached for it. you loved when jean looked you way. all you'd ever wanted was a life with him, not just a life in his shape.
Relationships: Jean Kirstein & Reader, Jean Kirstein/Reader, Jean Kirstein/You, Mikasa Ackerman & Jean Kirstein, Mikasa Ackerman/Jean Kirstein, Sasha Blouse & Connie Springer, Sasha Blouse & Jean Kirstein, Sasha Blouse & Jean Kirstein & Connie Springer
Series: be the scout [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2120427
Comments: 13
Kudos: 64





	a life in your shape

**Author's Note:**

> one of my first request from the new google form !! "I know the mitski fics are for warriors but i had this epiphany of jean with strawberry blonde, where maybe the reader is in love with jean but of course jean loves mikasa :'3". an extra spoiler warning for season 2, thank u so much for submitting, pls enjoy !

the mess hall was buzzing with life, rowdy with the chatter of dozens of cadets seated at long tables and speaking through swallows of their food. glasses were lifted and set down, bowls and plates clinking, utensils scraping sharply over various surfaces, nearly so loud that you could barely hear yourself think. but it all seemed to come to an abrupt silence when you settled your eyes back on him, taking in his formerly pale complexion now bronzy and sun-kissed from your hours of training, the annoyed yet playful glances he shot to connie and sasha as he worked through his soup and bread, full lips forming words that you couldn’t quite focus.

you were almost embarrassed of how smitten you were with jean, but in your mind, you couldn't understand how anyone _wouldn't_ be taken with him. his thin frame had filled out with lean muscle in the year and a half that you'd been training together in the 104th corp, somehow managing to grow even taller than he already was on that first day, still so spirited with his persistence to be among the best of this class, a lively spark that never seemed to dampen gleaming behind his eyes.

" _oh god_ , this again, jean?" you heard connie bemoan exaggeratedly, pulling you from the trance that you were surprised the other three at the table hadn't taken notice of.

jean was almost pouting now, and you would've found it so endearing had it not been the next words to spill from his mouth, indignant and full of tenacity. "don't be an ass, i've been trying to figure out a good excuse to sit with her for days now."

you followed his gaze despite knowing exactly who you'd find his eyes locked on, and forced yourself not to frown when you were met with the sight of mikasa just a few tables away.

"she's out of your league, man. not to mention having a thing for jaeger already, _and_ not to mention that jaeger wouldn't hesitate to hand your ass to you again if you pissed him off like you always do. cut it out."

"connie, that's mean!" sasha feigned offense on jean's behalf, most likely for the sake of goading the reply that came as a distraction to snatch the remainder of bread from his plate.

"i'm just being honest with him here. he's asking for advice, so i gave him some. jean always talks about being realist and yet he— _hey is that my food?!_ "

you turned away just as connie was lunging himself across the table, hearing the sounds of his fruitless efforts to tear the loaf from the girl's mouth, propping yourself up on your elbows and allowing your head to fall into your hands with a heavy sigh.

"what do you think?" in an instant, jean's eyes were on you, amber irises looking so intently at you that you could already feel a bothersome heat flushing your face. but registering his question sobered you, and stealing a glance at the beautiful dark-haired girl seated somewhere to your left was all in took to snuff out the light flutter in your chest.

"i don't know, jean. i think connie's kind of right about the whole eren thing." you were honest with him on a surface level, but it still didn't feel good to see him frown when you told him something he obviously didn't want to hear. you tried to remedy it by offering something more introspective—something a bit more true to your heart. "what i mean is that.. i think you're selling yourself short. mikasa obviously has her sights set elsewhere at the moment, and i just think you deserve someone who can bring the same sort of.." you struggled with your words for a moment, how could you not when he was leaning forward like that, listening so intently to you and you alone. "the same sort of _passion_. someone who can reciprocate." _someone like me_. but you bit those foolish words back.

"you understand, don't you?" he implored, looking past the bickering mess that sasha and connie had devolved to and gazing with such longing in the other girl's direction, "i mean.. i've never seen anyone like her, no one as beautiful.." each word gouged at your heart, a cold, empty sensation that left your chest feeling painfully hollow. "i know you're a girl, but you can see it too, right?"

you _could_ see it, you were painfully aware of how you could never match up to her unfamiliar yet alluring features, that graceful, slender frame that could somehow soar through the air with ease and still thrown you down onto your back so hard it would knock the wind out of you, introversion that gave off such a charming air of mystery to her admirers.

"yeah," you mumbled back, ignoring how a huffing connie fell heavily back into his seat beside jean, defeated, sasha happily gulping down her unfairly earned chunk of bread, only taking notice of how jean was too fixated on mikasa to pay your dismay any mind, "i see it alright."

\--

the air was thick with an unrelenting heat, stinking of steam and coppery with fresh blood, your vision fading in and out. your head was ringing with a deafening, high pitched peal and such an unbearable, crippling pain. you could feel your boots dragging across the hot dry dirt as something tugged you back by the collar of your shirt, and the terror of a titan with its misshaped limbs and mouth hauling you to your demise made you thrash aimlessly, screams for help spilling out as a disjointed groan of pain. and though it almost sounded as if you were underwater, sinking further and further beneath the lapping waves of your impending unconscious, you heard it, muffled, desperate, thick with tears, your name spilling from his lips.

and suddenly you remembered, you remembered the kidnapping and the unfaithful comrades and the mission to save humanity's last hope, your former friend now an almost unrecognizable abomination with ymir, bertholdt, and eren sitting atop his shoulders, clasped in his monstrous hands, that had now resorted to flinging titans in his primal desperation for escape. and as you blinked away the spots blacking out your vision, head lolling uselessly to the side, you could see your horse, half crushed in a puddle of red on the yellow grass, and realized that the warmth streaming down the side of your face is your own blood.

"jean..?" you mumbled, uselessly, barely coherent, but the near sob of relief from behind you is like an anchor back to reality.

you could see his calves on either side of you, feet kicking up clouds of dust as he pushed you both back, further from the fray and carnage, as far as he could muster. one of your blade scabbards was missing, you could feel that the clip on your gas tank had snapped off in your spectacular fall caused by the titan that was flung down in your path, irreparable damage most likely made to the fine mechanisms within the housing of your gear. you felt utterly hopeless, watching as the shade of a tree just barely shielded you from the blazing light of the sinking sun, hearing jean's gasping pants from behind you, feeling how rapidly his chest was rising and falling against the back of your head as you slumped into his body, leaden limbs weighing you down uselessly.

" _jean_." you wheezed, trying desperately to crane your heavy head back to meet his eyes one last time, eyes that no longer harbored the naive passion of youth but still gleamed so radiantly, "leave me.. here. you're g'nna— gonna die.. if you stay..."

you could feel his violent trembles now, feel him rip his green cloak from his shoulder to press against the throbbing wound on your head. "no. i-i'm staying. i n-n-need," he was scared, you knew he was terrified of allowing what happened to marco to happen to you, or sasha, or connie, or anybody, even if the boy's death was nowhere near his fault, "i need to s-save you."

but you could also feel something else—feel _it_ coming—the terrible, earth trembling footfalls of a titan making a shambling, uncoordinated advance to you and the scent of your blood. and suddenly jean was screaming, a sound so raw and petrified that you couldn't help but cry yourself at the sound of it. he laid you down on the ground, bunched cloak pillowing your bleeding skull, unable to push himself to his feet but still drawing his last blade to swing at the thing coming to kill you both, covering your battered body with his own.

and in that moment, you hated yourself. though your head was swimming and your lucidity was waning, you knew that you would both die there, under the baking sun and in the jaws of a titan, and it would be your fault. every regret that you'd ever harbored flooded your mind: not hugging your mother long enough when you still had the chance, not drinking that liquor when squad leader hange had offered it to you, and, most of all, never having the bravery to be honest with jean.

and you mourned all that lost time in those final moments, every late night you'd spent as trainees under the stars when you and your friends would sneak out of the dormitories to talk at some ungodly hour, every shared meal where you didn't speak nearly enough to him, every second of the crushing embraces you'd offered each other when the thought of your fallen friends caught up to you and proved to be far too much to handle on your own. how could you have done so much yet so little with your life?

and just as the titan was stumbling upon you, jean's scream of terror dampening out into a faithless cry, the thing was gone, galloping away to join a newly assembled horde descending upon one single point on the plain. but somehow, you felt no relief, not as you reached out a weak, trembled hand to grasp the blood and dirt streaked fabric of his shirt.

and as he turned to you, eyes still wide and body shaking with horror, thrumming with the adrenaline of near-death, you whispered, hoarse and tired as your grasp on the world slipped away. "i love you, jean. _i love you_."

your eyes fell shut, the involuntary spiral down further and further into the deep waters of unconsciousness pulling you in deeper and deeper by the second. you were grateful that you at least got to say something meaningful as your last words.

\--

there was a bright light, delicate, billowing fabric flouncing about in your bleary gaze as your eyes barely opened, something wrapped tight around your head, not making the pressure of the pounding headache any better. you couldn't fight the groan that even the small movement of turning onto your back caused, but you tried to force your lids open just an inch more at the sound of a gasp coming from somewhere in the room.

there were fast footsteps, a few shouts of " _sasha, no!_ " and then a crushing weight on your chest, squeezing around you, pulling you up in bed as a tearful sob of your name came from a comfortingly familiar voice.

"sasha. please. h-hurts." you barely managed to croak out, feeling yourself been torn free—or rather, her torn away—as connie yelled.

"get off them, you moron, they're fucking injured!!"

"i'm s-s-sorry!" she wailed, allowing herself to be dragged to the door by the disgruntled boy, "i'm j-just so happy you're s-s-still alive!!!"

"and i am too, but that doesn't mean i'm gonna go throw myself on top of them while they're in the hospital!"

their bickering was almost comforting in a way, allowing the strain in your chest from sasha's hug to ease as you watched them elbow each other in the sides on their way out of the room to take their loudness out into the hall, blowing raspberries and struggling to not laugh through their feigned anger. and finally your gaze was allowed to wander over to the furthest wall from your bed, and you saw jean, staring down at his shoes, brow furrowed and lip bitten. and he seemed almost startled to find yourself in his gaze, feet slowly taking him to your side.

"i owe you my life, you know?" you said as he settled himself on the edge of the mattress, still not meeting your gaze.

"you don't owe me anything. you shouldn't feel in debt to me."

"but i do," you risked to settle your hand over his, finally drawing his worried, amber eyes onto yours, and you could feel your heart beginning to pick up, the butterflies that you had always forced to settle with a pessimistic thought to squash your optimism light in your chest, "i meant what i said before i passed out in the field. i always have."

and for just a moment, you thought that this was finally it, that you would no longer have to languish over wasted time and wasted words, fingers just barely curling around his warm palm. then, a knock at the door, light and delicate before the handle turned, pushing open to reveal mikasa.

and you caught every small movement of jean's features, the way his eyes sparked with a familiar light, the sudden, faint flush of color across his slender face, lips parting and just barely perking up at the ends. an endless, unwavering adoration.

"eren is awake, if you'd like to talk to him." that was all she had peeked in to say, but jean was still gazing at the door for a moment too long after she'd left.

"u-um.. if you don't mind—"

"go ahead." you told him, gently, pulling your hand away, retreating as far as your body could into the mattress, under the covers, turning your gaze away.

and though he'd slowly, almost nervously exited your room, you could hear the clear pick-up in his pace as soon as he'd shut the door behind him and exited into the hall, probably rushing to try and catch mikasa for a moment alone in the hallway before he had to share her attention with everyone else.

and it hurt, like a blade buried between your ribs, being jerked and twisted with every memory of his affinity, the one that was never directed at you despite how you craved it. and you'd realized that you had melded a life in his shape, a life where you were always just a few steps too far behind, hand outstretched, reaching for him as you hurried to grasp at any minuscule opportunity to be with him, speak to him, hear his laugh and see his near blinding smiles that never seemed to last long enough to you.

but, perhaps one day, someday farther into the future. and if not then, maybe in another life.

**Author's Note:**

> alright so,,, i know i haven't even wrapped up the warrior series but this prompt just inspired me to make a whole other series just for the scout !! although i mostly have my heart set on the warriors, i'll always love the scouts, and it'd be a little unfair of me to just not write anything for them (´ ∀ ` *) plus there really just seems to be a mitski song for everyone,,, i guess it's destiny !


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